


Delusions

by AnimeGirlAnn



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Blood and Gore, Don't read this for the Saimatsu, Eldritch Abomination Kaede, Experimental Style, Gen, Humanity Complex, Late Halloween Fic, One-Sided Attraction, Psychological Horror, Unreliable Narrator, only at first though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 13:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16493450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnimeGirlAnn/pseuds/AnimeGirlAnn
Summary: The desk is unusually clammy when Shuichi wakes up with his face pressed against it.That’s odd. He’s not the type to fall asleep in class, that was always Himiko’s trait not his.Sleep crusted eyes open and see bright pink.Splattered pink. Dripping pink. Dried pink covering every wall and crevice and all coming out of the shadowed silhouettes of his classm-Shuichi blinks again and sees his normal classroom. He could’ve sworn he saw something else, but maybe it was just something in his eyes.....Below him his classmates rot regardlessly





	Delusions

The desk is unusually clammy when Shuichi wakes up with his face pressed against it.

That’s odd. He’s not the type to fall asleep in class, that was always Himiko’s trait not his.

But the aching stiffness in his limbs speak otherwise. How long had he been asleep exactly?

His body’s too rigid to make moving feel anything but painful so he opts to instead open the eye that isn’t against the desk and hope he’ll have a good enough angle to look around properly.

Sleep crusted eyes open and see bright pink.

Splattered pink. Dripping pink. Dried pink covering every wall and crevice and all coming out of the shadowed silhouettes of his classm-

Shuichi blinks again and sees his normal classroom. He could’ve sworn he saw something else, but maybe it was just something in his eyes.

A violet sunrise peered through the windows illuminating the empty desks lined up neatly. It was almost eerie in an uncanny valley way how uncharacteristically standard it all looked, more like a picture in a magazine than his real classroom.

Had he been that tired? He felt fine that morning and actually had a decent night’s sleep before that. Actually why didn’t Kaito wake him up to remind him he needs to be in best shape for tonight’s training or Maki shake him up to be irritated at his laziness? They were still here last he could remember. Kaito was scrambling down the answers to the homework he forgot to do while Maki nagged at him. Nearby someone (Kokichi maybe?) was ordering tea from Kirumi who already had gotten a tea set out beforehand. He thinks Angie might’ve been doodling something on the board, but he was too preoccupied observing Kaede’s and Rantaro’s empty desks and wondering where they were.

Then Kaede finally came through the doors and-

...Actually he can’t remember what had happened before he blacked out. Maybe Kaito and Maki just were absent and that’s why they left him.

But that still didn’t explain why the room was so empty. It made sense since everyone had likely gone home considering the time but his desk had nothing on it too. What happened to his backpack, his pencils, books, or anything else that was just gone?

There was just nothing.

In the back of his already sleep addled mind, Shuichi could feel the familiar throb of a headache building up. He harshly rubbed at his temples, he just needed to think clearer in spite of the haze in his head. There was something he couldn’t remember, a memory that got him from point a to point b. The question was _what_.

Though telling himself to get himself together doesn’t get rid of the grogginess seeping through bones or the dry taste in his mouth. He grits his teeth and forces his shaky palms to heave himself off the desk, even his arms felt so unfamiliarly weak today. His spine hit the back of his chair and his neck leaned backwards with it, less out of comfort than just being too exhausted to move his creaky joints.

It’s in this upright position that he realizes he isn’t in fact alone. Kaede had been sitting across from him this entire time. Her round eyes too absorbed in pensively staring at a crack in the desk to acknowledge him.

How didn’t he notice her right in front of him, was the sleep getting to him _that_ much?

He wants to say something along the lines of ‘Hi Kaede!’ or ‘Is it me or does this room seem creepier than usual? Also why do I keep getting a weird feeling of deja vu then forgetting why?’

What comes out of his dried and unused mouth instead is something more along the lines of a mix between a cough and a sound resembling someone choking on their own tongue.

It makes Kaede look up at him though and her worried look gets forced off into a warm smile that’s just the tiniest bit too tense.

“Have you ever heard of La Campanella? Liszt?” she asks abruptly.

“I-”

“Well actually I guess you wouldn’t since you don’t like classical music that much,” she shook her head and let out a quick, anxious laugh that died down just as quickly.

Her hand moved to grip her other arm and she let out a shaky breath, “It’s originally a violin song, but there’s a piano version my old instructor used to like a lot. It had such a pretty melody and this almost playful passion in it that just grips you, at least that’s what he use to say.”

“O-Okay?” even for Kaede this seemed rather out of nowhere, but Shuichi wasn’t sure how to stop her without risking offending her. So he just did what he normally did and stayed quiet until he had a chance to say his own thoughts.

“I don’t know though, you always have to make an effort to keep up with the song which can be exciting and all but... It always made me feel so anxious. The rhythm had no stops and it felt like running out of air with your heart pounding uncontrollably.” She let out a tired chuckle, “I don’t know why but I want to play it again for some reason.”

Shuichi... wasn’t sure how to respond to that, “... Um, I’m sorry Kaede but do you know how long I was out? I can’t remember falling asleep.”

Kaede shrugged, “Don’t worry about that, I didn’t notice you were only asleep till just now.”

‘You were only asleep’? Did she think he was doing something else or...?

Her shoulders tensed up and a troubled expression grew over her face, “I-I’m sorry Shuichi, I just ignored your worries just now didn’t I?”

Shuichi’s chest tightened at her guilty face,“N-No! I-I’m fine, you look like your feeling worse than me anyways.”

“Sheesh, you don’t have to look so guilty all of a sudden,” Kaede awkwardly smiled at him but looked a little less tense now, “Maybe we’re both just a little too tired, huh?”

Shuichi nods, “Yeah, I guess so.”

He doesn’t say anything after that and neither does Kaede, leaving the conversation to die off into unsettling silence. Kaede looks back at one of the corners of the room with the same pensive look from before. Shuichi follows her gaze but just sees another empty corner albeit mostly shadowed by the afternoon’s dim lighting.

Usually Kaede would be the one who filled in moments like these by talking about a new piece she played or something about their classmates but she seems too preoccupied staring aimlessly right now.

There’s nothing wrong with silent moments, he doesn’t really mind them and they can be relaxing over the jumbled screeching of their over energetic classmates at times. But it’s an eerie sight to see the usually preppy pianist so lifelessly still as she is now. He wonders if she forgot he was even there.

Maybe she just wants to be alone right now? It’s a disheartening thought but Shuichi doesn’t want to be selfish towards someone like Kaede whose always wanted the best for everyone.

Besides, it’s not like she’s the only person he can hang out with to ask about what he missed in class. There’s always-

...

Um...

There was his friend who got him into training at night, who’d point out the stars to him and was...

Wait, no... He was thinking of his female classmate who’d been reluctant to hang out with him at first but he enjoyed her blunt company and she seemed to warm up to him, her name was... Um.

Did someone train with him during the night? He feels like he was with someone during those times but can’t remember anyone there with him.

Kaede was still silent.

What was he thinking about again? People to hang out with, at least he thinks that’s what it was.

Well he wasn’t really close to anyone in his class but there was a few people he still recalled wanting to get closer too, like the socially awkward but friendly robotic person-

The short, fantasy obsessed girl and her hyperactive friend might be free-

That plain girl in back once invited him to watch anime with her-

He always wanted to learn more about that one compulsive liar-

...Wait a minute. Why was he trying to think of people he could hang out with when he was still new to this school and only knew Kaede. He hasn’t even memorized the faces of any of his other classmates let alone got to know them.

Kaede let out a pained groan and hunched back with both hands clutching at her forehead, “I’m doing the right thing. I know I am.”

“H-Huh?”

Her eyes shot open and pink eyes stared at him as if suddenly remembering he was there, “O-Oh! Um, sorry Shuichi, I didn’t realize I said that out loud,” she straightened and beamed casually at him as if nothing happened, “I’m just a little stressed right now, so sorry if I act kind of weird.”

The sight of her trying to smile at him despite her obvious unease warmed his heart, “Don’t be, your always so optimistic and friendly to everyone you meet. It’s okay to let out some stress every now and then, I think you deserve it the most.”

She lets out a strangled chuckle at that, “Is that what you think of me, huh?” she shook her head and looked at the floor, “You really are a good guy Shuichi, I can tell you that.”

Shuichi bit his lip, “Kaede, you can ignore me if I’m being too noisy but,” he glanced at her hands still tightly gripping her sleeves despite her peaceful face, “are you okay?”

Kaede just stared him, and kept staring, unblinking with a frozen half smile on her face.

Any worry or suspicions melted away at the suffocating feeling that bobbed up inside his throat and tightened around his esophagus from her all consuming eye contact.  _Did he say something wrong?_ He averted his eyes and reached up to pull down the cap of his hat, desperate to put anything between him and those eyes.

He never considered himself anything particularly charismatic but he was hoping he was at least decent at reading social cues. If anyone had to think of him as weird he didn’t want that person to be Kaede of all people.

She... She was the best person Shuichi had ever met. No one had ever comforted him like she did before, told him he should be a detective because he was kind to people not just efficient, made him feel so loved in a way his parents, not even his uncle, ever did with just a comforting smile.

She looked at the strangers making up their class on the first day and announced how she wanted to befriend all of them without any shame.

She could look people in the eye and say exactly what she felt without being rude or choking up like he did.

She wasn’t optimistic just because she wanted to make everyone feel better, but because she genuinely believed everything would turn out all right. It was such a carefree positivity that Shuichi always wished for but the voice in the back of his head would never let him have.

( _Was that a pessimistic voice or a voice of reason though..?_ )

Kaede was everything he ever wanted to be and wasn’t.

He trusted her.

( _W_ _hy can’t he remember anyone else? What color is this room?_ )

Kaede kept staring and the room was still clean and not pink.

...Why does something still feel so wrong though?

In the midst of his thoughts, he didn’t notice that the floor below him was still stained a bright pink from where Angie’s shredded remains of a torso were dropped. A little away from that the rest of the carpet was covered by Gonta’s wide corpse where his entrails hid whatever his body couldn’t from sight. Blood had even gotten splattered on the window from when Tsumugi had been thrown repeatedly against it to the point she didn’t even look human anymore. In the corner of the room where Kaede was staring, Rantaro’s fleshy pink brain peeked out at Shuichi through the cracks in it’s skull. But Shuichi didn’t see any of it.

Shuichi only saw an empty classroom and Kaede.

....

Kaede sighed in relief for what felt like the tenth time that day. When Shuichi had asked her if she was okay she’d thought he might’ve noticed that she seemed bloodier than usual and she failed to completely force his vision to see only what she wanted.

But looking at his guilty expression and reading through his mind, this was luckily not the case.

She just needed to make sure that was all Shuichi saw and they’d be fine.

It would all be fine.

Below him, Shuichi’s classmates rotted regardlessly of his departure into his delusions.

 

.....

 

For as long as Kaede could remember, she always had these extra appendages.

She couldn’t see them and if she reached out to try and touch one all she’d feel is air.

But they were there, she knew because if she wanted them too they could grab things, move things, and break things with an unbounded strength she could change at will.

She wasn’t an idiot though. Even when she was a toddler she never spoke a word of it and no one ever asked. Mostly because not telling people about them let her get away with more things.

Missed a note on the piano? They’re always there to press it for her the moment she forgets.

Can’t reach the cookie jar? They’re height could bend and shorten however she wanted and no one could prove afterwards how she reached the jar five feet above her.

Someone pulling her hair and pushing her to the cement hard enough to bleed in tag? Forget about tag, shapeless limbs can be sharpened to an edge with a mere thought and stabbed through their tiny pinkies without any warning and no one could say it was Kaede’s fault.

Not a lot of kids played tag after it happened more than once though.

Though at that point everyone had loved (feared?) Kaede so she didn’t mind.

Now though it made her stomach clench to remember how that that one kid screeched when she twisted off his whole pinky during a tantrum, worse was how she remembered not caring about it at all. Mostly just thinking that he had a high pitched shriek for a boy.

Maybe it was that inhumane apathy towards suffering that started to make her wonder if something was wrong with her. Though it also could’ve been how no one ever mentioned anything about humans having abnormal limbs whenever she asked. But she was pretty sure it was how her parents never scolded her like the other kids that made her suspicious, they just smiled and asked her politely in the same plastic but calming voice as commercial actors to ‘please stop, Kaede.’

They’d only ever say ‘please stop, Kaede’ like talking to a caged beast that got out. Even when she was throwing cookie jars and stones heavier than herself from the garden at them in frustration that’s all they said. She couldn’t even remember the reason why she started commanding her limbs to fling everything in sight at her parents that night. But she could remember them hiding behind the bathroom door and her father pleading ‘please stop, Kaede’ while her mother quietly sobbed in the background.

She got a little better after that and her parents a little more distanced. In retrospect though they might have always been that way but she only realized it after that incident. They still never talked about just how much they knew about her and whenever Kaede tried to ask her mother would walk in with a limp from when a stone had shattered her femur and Kaede found herself choking on air.

When they looked at her, Kaede wasn’t sure what they saw. But it wasn’t human.

It didn’t matter though because she was human and everyone else saw her as human. Her classmates saw a friendly, normal girl and Kaede didn’t want anything more.

So she pushed her see through limbs tightly against her chest till it got hard to breath and walked through life with a smile on her face. Even if it did nothing really because no one could see or feel them anyways, she just wanted to imagine that they weren’t there, floating around her like leeches in a pond.

At least until she found out she could do more with them than just throw things around.

It started over a fight with Himiko, they’d been doing a project together and Himiko slept the entire time Kaede worked. Afterwards all she said was she’d finish it later with her ‘maaaaagic.’ Needless to say, Kaede didn’t exactly believe her. After that everything just spiraled and by the end of it she felt like going back to stabbing pinkies on playgrounds and Himiko looked between stomping out like a brat or flat out sobbing.

“T-T-T....”

Was… Was she calling for Tenko? How old was she to be calling for someone else to save her like a toddler!? She wasn’t even doing anything to her!

“T-T-Ten....”

Knowing Himiko she’d probably make up some lie to make her look like the bad guy, probably a terrible one but Tenko would buy it. What if the rest of the class hears about whatever dumb story Himiko will tell? What if they believe it? She could see it now, the ginger’s lazily smug face looking down at her while everyone else gives her a look of disgust that makes her want her extra limbs to curl around her into a ball and shield her from everyone’s judgement despite her being  _normal and there’s nothing wrong with her and her parents scared eyes are wrong too dammit-!_

“TENKO-!”

She didn’t think about it, they moved on their own panicked assumptions and before she knew it one of her unnatural appendages was aiming for the other’s forehead.

Himiko froze.

Her head didn’t burst open like an overripe watermelon like Kaede expected but-

She wasn’t blinking, she wasn’t moving, Kaede wasn’t even sure if she was _breathing_.

She shook her shoulders,“H-Himiko? Himiko?! Say something!”

Himiko seized up, “N-Nyeh!? S-Something, something!”

“.... Huh?”

“Oh, uh... Sorry, I just wanted to say that... for some reason,” Himiko glanced awkwardly to the side, “I-I mean because it’s magic!”

Kaede blinked.

Even Himiko seemed to know how ridiculous that sounded, “Nevermind, I think I took too long a nap or something,” she rubbed at her eyes, “I’m just gonna go home now.”

Kaede didn’t even think to remind her they were in the middle of working on a group project while she left. Outside the room she could hear a worried Tenko arriving and asking Himiko why she called for her and if a degenerate got to her. Himiko just complained about Tenko having mold in her ears because she didn’t say anything.

Next to her, one of her inhumane limbs poked at her side.

Following the Himiko.... incident(?).... Kaede tried it a few more times on her other classmates. A simple poke could make them forget the last few minutes, more complicated actions could make them forget specific memories or think something Kaede put into their heads.

Whenever Ryoma seemed too depressed to make civil conversation she’d prod at his mind a bit and he wouldn’t even remember his own destructive train of thought a second later. Gonta’s overreactions over disagreements on bugs or dumb anime debates with Tsumugi could be over in an instant.

For once she found herself almost grateful for her extra flesh, not that she wouldn’t prefer to be without them. But it was close enough for her.

It wasn’t always easy though. All minds were a little different from each others, some like Himikos or Gontas were soft like play dough and bent to any little touch so much that she’d have to be delicate messing with them in case she shattered their minds on accident. Other’s tended to be trickier, more unexplainably guarded and too questioning of unexpectedly having their thoughts changed. For some reason she couldn’t even nudge at Kokichi’s mind, sometimes his mind would be so welcomingly easy but then he’d keep talking as if she hadn’t done anything at all. If it weren’t for his occasional short looks of confusion when she’d do it, Kaede would’ve thought he knew and was purposely trolling her.

She only got better at it with practice though.

Soon even the brick wall of explosives that was Maki’s paranoid mind could be manipulated by some careful leading.

At the start of the year everyone had their varying issues with Kaede. Some thinking her positivity was annoying, she was a little too controlling, maybe a little hypocritical about her friendship speeches. But by the end of the year no one could remember that though, because Kaede was always so kind and calming to be around, who didn’t love her?

Kokichi was still an outlier though and she sometimes worried he would catch on, but how could he connect it to her? It’d be like explaining to the doctor how your legs broke because your six year old threw boulders bigger than herself at you. She had the whole class on her side and most people didn’t like him to begin with anyways. Kaede felt human and her classmates felt contented so it’d all be fine.

It didn’t seem like she was doing anything wrong at the time, if anything she was making the classroom more cheerful than before by getting rid of everyone’s negative thoughts. She was doing the right thing, keeping everyone together like the fragile harmony of an orchestra.

So she kept practicing.

Unfortunately most people tended to get headaches or become increasingly agitated if she kept messing with them for extended periods of time. She learned this the hard way while bugging Korekiyo’s mind for answers during an english test and caused him to have a mental breakdown in the middle of class. Luckily it did cause the test to be cancelled and moved back to a later date but Kaede couldn’t say hearing Korekiyo cry out in pain for his sister made it worth it.

Rantaro eventually became her main guinea pig for this reason. He was the only one she encountered so far that she could twist and prod at for hours at a time without any repercussions on his side.

( _Or_   _maybe he just hid it better than the rest and she was grating at the irreplaceable soul in his mind till it was nothing but dust this entire time-_ )

Mostly she tested how much she could make a person forget. It started small by just making him forget where he put things until eventually she started practicing having him forget his own name before making him remember again.

It was never anything harmful, Kaede never wanted that, nothing she did was out of some monstrous (inhumane) sadism. Though… it was fun, to see Rantaro be so lost sometimes over the simplest things almost like a cartoon character. Not in a “I’m having so much fun ruining your life way” just an innocent giggle when your friend does something stupid. Sometimes she’d even do it to him to make the class lighten up when the atmosphere felt a little dull. Rantaro always laughed it off. That’s why it never occured to Kaede something might be going wrong, because she never tried to do anything wrong. Just make her classmates feel better.

Until Rantaro told her he had started going to the doctors because he had woken up that morning and thought his own sisters were strangers who had broken into his house.

(" _I don’t know whats wrong with me but I couldn’t recognize them, any of them. Even my own mother’s starting to look like a stranger when I see her... I don’t know what to do Kaede, what do I do...?”_ )

Kaede didn’t touch him after that. Even when he was shaking, barely holding himself together in the back of the room when he realized another thing he forgot she’d just force everyone else turn away to give him room to breathe.

Deep down she knew she was just ignoring the problem and it would only get worse... But... how could she fix this?

Messing with his mind caused this, she couldn’t just use the same strategy and expect that too work. It’d just make it worse, the best thing she could do in this situation is nothing, let it heal on its own instead of irritating the wound she made.

Though the way the bags below his eyes only got darker and his shoulders more hunched didn’t make her feel any better.

She was was an idiot for not doing anything then. Because it did backfire on her like she should’ve known it would.

Rantaro had invited her to the library to talk about something personal, she was too guilty and too concerned to think it was anything suspicious.

“I... I haven’t made any progress with the doctors,” Rantaro admitted, fiddling with a book at the shelf he was standing near.

“O-Oh,” Kaede swallowed nervously from the table she sat at, “Well, maybe it’s just a temporary road block? I hear that happens a lot to people with serious prob-um, I mean-”

Rantaro shook his head, “I’m not that sensitive about it.” Kaede forced out a laugh to ease the tension, it wasn’t working.

He cleared his throat, “That isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about though. Since most medicines aren’t working on me I decided to contact some of my associates I made from my travels for alternative treatments. Eventually an old man I helped once in Kingsport said he had an idea about what was happening... He thinks someone’s doing this to me.”

Kaede’s breath stopped.

Rantaro looked at her, “Do... Do you think it’s true?”

Contradicting the rawness of her rising panic clawing through her chest, instead of a sob what came out of her was a laugh, “Pft... ahahahahaha! That’s ridiculous! Why would anyone do that? Come on, you know we’re all friends here!”

He gave her a skeptical look but it seemed (thankfully) more playful than suspicious, “That doesn’t mean much in situations like these I’m afraid, though I gotta say I’m a little jealous of how much you believe in everyone.”

A bead of sweat ran down the back of her neck, “Heh, it’s an effort all right.”

Rantaro grinned and walked towards her without noticing the book lying on the ground in front of him. “Rantaro there’s a-”

Before she could warn him he predictably slipped and fell onto the slippery floor, “Aaa-AH!”

_Clink._

There was a gun. A gun fell out of Rantaro’s pocket when he fell and hit the floor, skidding away from him towards her.

She could only stare at it.

He knew.

He knew what she had been doing to him. To everyone.

_He knew and he was going to kill her for it._

The appendages around her stiffened.

Rantaro was saying something, she could see his mouth moving but couldn’t hear him over the repeating image in her head of a gunshot going through her again and again and again till there’s nothing but a blonde bloody mush of herself left.

In the corner of her eye Rantaro’s hand twitched towards the gun.

When she looked again there’s a hole in his head reaching down into puffy pink flesh below pale bone. With a detached sort of awareness she realizes she’s the one who did that and one of her intangible limbs are still stuck in his head. She moves it out and his corpse falls to the ground with a wet ‘slosh’ sound.

She killed someone.

Rantaro’s dead.

But. He tried to kill her, so it was self defense. Yeah... it was self defense, that’s right. She’s right. She still has a body in front of her staring back with dulling eyes.

How can she explain what happened? The gun’s there with Rantaro’s finger prints on it so she can prove that she’s not just a heartless killer but how is so supposed to say how she killed him!?

‘My monster limbs broke his skull clean Mr. Officer. Yes, they’re there you just can’t see them is all!’

She can’t.

_She can’t_.

_She’s human and she won’t let them take that away from her because it’s true._

Silently, Kaede grabs Rantaro’s arms and drags him towards the door.

....She’ll have to hide the body. She’s not a murderer since she was defending herself from him but she can’t let anyone know what happened so she’ll have to act like one. But she wasn’t one, she absolutely wasn’t.

Their classroom was near a mostly deserted part of school and no one was around during lunch. Since the air conditioner had an issue that randomly caused it to go between freezing or frying temperatures no one ever ate lunch there. She just needed to hide the corpse in the extra broom closet in back her teacher never uses and think about what to do next. Kaede could think of something she just needed more time to get her head straight and plan.

Think of something calming, Debussy’s Claire de Lune, Chopin’s Spring Waltz, Satie’s Lent et douloureux.  

With time moving like molasses she eventually gets to her classroom and pushes the door open to where she can hide Rantaro and-

Her classmates stare back at her covered in blood and pulling Rantaro’s prone form behind her.

She looks at the clock, lunch ended ten minutes ago. She must’ve lost track of time after Rantaro died while she was still standing there looking at the life drain from his eyes unsure of what she was even doing.

Kirumi drops a silver tray she was carrying tea on and it clangs onto the ground shattering the porcelain teacups but she doesn’t seem to notice.

It’s fine. They’re her classmates-

( _They’re witnesses-_ )

She can just make them forget. It’ll be hard but she can do it.

Erase their memories.

Hide the body.

It’ll be fine.

Kirumi reaches for something behind her ( _just like how Rantaro reached for the gun to kill her_ ).

Kaede panics.

 

…

 

The only survivors are Maki, Kirumi, Kokichi, and Shuichi.

Kirumi had been the only one successfully defending the class at the start of it but ran away once she realized it was a losing battle to try and fight her with nothing but a broom.  

Maki had just plain tried to kill her, guns, knives and all the weapons the assassin had hidden on her from the moment Kaede tore Kaito’s hand clean off and stabbed him through the chest in the same instance. The only reason Maki hadn’t stayed to fight her was because she still thought she could save Kaito if she got him to a hospital. Realistically though Kaito was already dead where he stood from the blood loss and Kaede should’ve gone for them but Gonta was distracting her at the moment. When Kaede had finally choked him out and turned back they were long gone.

She didn’t even know how or when Ouma left but when she was counting up the bodies he wasn’t there, he wasn’t anywhere. But she couldn’t find it in herself to care about it.

And Shuichi....

He was still giving her a worried look from across the desk.

Honestly, he was an accident. She had been an inch off and knocked him out instead of killing him. It almost made her scream when she saw his eyes open while still covered in his own dried blood. She had to take over his mind completely to stop him from having a panic attack outright.

She’d never controlled one’s person mind so deeply as she did Shuichi’s right then to keep him quiet, even to Rantaro. It had to be done though, she didn’t want to kill another person and she couldn’t let him leave.

Through what felt like dumb luck, she actually managed to keep him calm by manually editing everything he saw and thought. Blood on the floor? Just the carpeting, Shuichi. What about the corpses? Those are shadows, don’t be silly Shuichi. Is my face covered in blood-? Your face is just cold, geez Shuichi your so paranoid today.

It was a little concerning how much she disfigured his mind to make him see the aftermath of the massacre as a normal room. A little part of her was proud she had managed to do this, a bigger part of her wondered if she made another Rantaro due to her mistakes.

It didn’t matter now though, what’s done was done and Kaede had too... Kaede had too...

Kaede kept staring at Rantaro’s gaping skull, still leaning into the corner of the room where she left it.

He was her first victim and she couldn’t feel a single thing about it.

_But she should_.

She should feel guilty about Miu’s corpse that she ripped the head off of or Korekiyo’s gaping neck still pooling blood or the pile of junk she tore Kiibo into.

But nothing. Just nothing. The sight of sloshing guts coming out of Gonta’s stomach or the already rotting stench from pile of gooze Tsumugi became after she slammed her head into the window too hard. Kaede could only think that they kind of looked a little funny like this. Like a caricature of what people are supposed to look like with their heads too flat and bones peeking out of their skin like a jack in the box.

It was the moments before killing them that made Kaede’s skin crawl like a persons, because they were still moving, still breathing, _still screaming._

( _She tried not to think of Ryoma’s quiet acceptance or Kaito reaching out to stop her or Himiko sobbing and curled up between the dismembered body of Tenko after she tried to save her while Kaede just cut through their-_ )

It had to be done, all of it had to be done.

( _Angie was the first one she killed. Closest to her and in the way of Kirumi where she was actually planning to strike but missed. The warm feeling of the artist’s split flesh tightly wrapping around her from where she stabbed into had triggered something primal within her she hadn’t noticed when she was dazed after killing Rantaro. Getting everyone else became easy after that-_ )

She didn’t enjoy any of it.

It just had to be done because they saw her do it and she couldn’t let herself be caught. It was all self defense nothing more.

( _Gonta trying to use himself as a meat shield and Kiibo incorrectly thinking his metal frame could withstand her unseeable attacks and Miu trying to swing a wrench at her to open her skull up like Rantaro’s-_ )

Now they might as well just be sacks of runny meat that she kept forcing herself to stare at to feel something.

( _And felt nothing._ )

Kaede looked back at Shuichi, still nervously looking around as if he could vaguely sense something was wrong with his vision. Which was probably true but she’d push back any thoughts of it.

It was kind of funny how he ended up being her lone survivor, minusing the three that got away that is. They were always kind of close, though Shuichi seemed closer to her than she was too him.

Most of his bond towards her seemed to have come from that one time she comforted him about the reason why he wears his hat, his first murder case. She’d like to say it was a touching moment (and it was) but it worried her how suddenly Shuichi just attached himself to her after that. All she did was say kind things to make him feel better like anyone else in that situation would’ve done (well… maybe not Kokichi) and he clung to her as if she had just saved his life. If anything it made her worry if his ‘hands off’ parents left him more touch starved than she thought. Although she was still a little flattered by the rose tinted glasses he looked at her through.

It was also always pleasant how little she had to mess with his mind to keep the classroom peaceful or erase any negative thoughts about her before this all happened. His mind was always odd in how it would question small thing she’d do to it but whenever she put an optimistic or encouraging thought into it he’d grab onto it like a starved beggar to crumbs.

Overall though he was just another classmate who was reliable enough when she needed him.

Now he was the only classmate she had left. Funny how that works.

Across from her, Shuichi gave her a weak smile.

He still looked at her like she was normal despite it all. Albeit because she practically mind raped him to forget everything he saw and was seeing but still.

For once since she saw Rantaro’s insides, she felt stable.

Someone still thought she was right, someone looked at her like she was a normal person. No, not a normal person, more than a normal person. Shuichi looked at her like how Angie would stare at her statues of Atua, devoted, admiring, and unquestioningly trusting as if he thought she was truly above him.

Like a puppy.

Experimentally, she reached out to flick off the hat he was hiding shyly behind. A little cruel considering she knew it was his comfort object but she had killed twelve people, why bother keeping up appearances after that?

He looked a little dumbfounded and unsettled by it but didn’t say anything. Good.

She rubbed his head gently, caressing that one stray upward hair between her fingers as she moved while being careful to avoid his head injury. Shuichi let out an indecipherable stammer before giving up after a minute of failed speech and silently let her have her way with his hair. After a few minutes of this he started to lean into the touch with half lidded eyes and a slight blush in his cheeks.  

_Yeah_ , she couldn’t help but think, _he really is just like a puppy._

Kaede pinched his ahoge and jokingly made it wave side to side like a tail wagging, it was surprisingly cute on him.

This would work out, she was sure of it. She’d take Shuichi and have him get everything they’d need so she could escape the cops then escape the city, maybe the country if needs be. If anyone tried to stop her she could do to them what she did to Shuichi.

They’d be fine.

Below them their classmates rotted regardlessly of the two’s departure into their delusions.

**Author's Note:**

> I was planning on posting this on Halloween but homework and timing got in the way, luckily I think I managed to scrabble up some decent horror before it got too late.   
> In case it was a little difficult to understand at points, (which isn't surprising considering Shuichi's beginning narration was pretty jumbled) basically Kaede is an eldritch abomination with limited mind control abilities and telekinesis. After accidentally murdering Rantaro because she thinks he's trying to kill her due to having a gun (whether he is or not is up to interpetation), she is caught by her classmates and she tries to kill them all in a panic. Shuichi gets lucky and survives though so Kaede pretty much uses her powers to mind rape him into seeing a fictional view of the classroom so he doesn't panic. To keep him from questioning anything she keeps removing more and more memories that make the situation suspicious, which is basically why he starts forgetting his friends and thinks he's a new student by the end of his narration.   
> The rest of it is pretty much the two trying to keep their shit together in this situation (mostly Kaede).  
> Besides that, I hope you enjoyed my amateur writing lol.


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